Posts from the ‘MAJOR GIFTS’ Category

By Gil Israeli, GI Financial Resource Development and Dir. of Operations, Osher ELC

When seeking to connect with a major gifts prospect, it is smart fundraising to draw on a lay person who knows the prospect well or can connect to the prospect through a few degrees of separation. Since this isn’t always possible, the next best strategy is to introduce and connect people who share avid, strong affiliations and affinities. One anthropologist has described these social traits as “co-membership” – unique points of contact in shared identity.

The really good fundraisers and prospect researchers go beyond identifying prospects and look for points of co-membership between your helpful community and prospects. These are ideal launch pads for relationship-building and just a few of these include… Read more

Currently, appearing in APRA’s online magazine Connections, Volume 25, 1-Q1. The article is a review of Israeli’s session at APRA’s International Conference, August 2013.

Years ago, a fundraiser send me a research request with minimal data: an individual’s name and residence. He noted (with an exclamation point) that the family foundation had assets exceeding $100 million. Responding too quickly, I reviewed the list of grants for the past three years and placed each gift in one of three categories that I had decided represented the foundation’s giving: higher education, medical causes and social welfare. I generated statistics on the foundation’s interests and multi-year giving trends. Then, I listed board members, contributors to the foundation and changes in their investments. I sent this insightful research to the fundraiser and his response was to the point: “Great stuff, but what I need to know is how to access the foundation president.”

What is one critical difference between an organization that has raised several major gifts and the organization that continuously raises major gifts… maintaining a growing major gifts program?

In brief, the latter nurtures longevity in all its relationships and understands that longevity is the key to nurturance. And, specifically, it is learning relationships that elevate organizations to raise major gifts.

Today, having a major gifts fundraising program has become one of the outstanding priorities (and sometimes wish) of many fundraising organizations. After all, you can spend two years raising small gifts of $5,000 to meet a $1,000,000 campaign goal, or, you can cultivate the same number of prospects all with $50,000 to $100,000 gift potential and target a much higher campaign goal.

The strategy to achieving this requires multiple developments in your company culture and a confluence of three critical persons in your operation: board members (which includes prospects/donors and volunteers), fundraisers and researchers. A healthy web of relationships here bears directly not only on your annual fundraising revenue but also on the robustness (and sometimes the longevity of your organization).

Organizations that are successful at raising major gifts identify prospects with the right capacity and interests that fit their mission. They consider plausibility from the start – the critical element: Could the prospect enrich his or her life through a relationship with us and eventual gift?

Other questions include: Is the prospect over-committed? What do we know about his assets and more liquid wealth? How has the economy affected this? Identification tends to be the easier part, whereas securing the critical first meeting often requires the aid of a door-opener or “access person”.